Another Faust

by Daniel Nayeri

  As they turned to leave, Victoria swooped into the room. She saw the insects twitching on the floor, a few of them flying in dazed circles. “What have you done?” she yelled. “What have you done to them?”

  “We’re leaving,” said Christian.

  “Get out!” said Victoria, wishing they had said something else so that she could scream at them.

  The two of them stopped. They wanted to say they were sorry. Not for anything they had done, but for the fact that those bugs were the only friends Victoria knew. But they realized that if they stayed, they would only encourage her to fume at them.

  “I hate you!” she yelled after them.

  As they walked on, they heard Victoria ranting in a voice more bitter and enraged than they had ever heard before. It was as though Victoria was losing more of herself every day, becoming more and more the faceless generic villain, the kind of hobgoblin you’d be afraid of but just as soon forget, the gremlin you’d see in pictures of hell that symbolizes something else, serves something else, without any idea who it used to be.

  Victoria lay on the floor and nuzzled her poor babies. She alternately licked their wounds and, in angry fits, crushed their spines. Finally she gathered the few that had recovered in her hand and hissed into their faces, “Follow them.”

  “Johann my friend, I am doubly cursed — a failure whose friends have found fame.”

  “Stop your self-pity. You have money. Go and live your dreams.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have courage enough to match my dreams.”

  “Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

  “Ah, very pretty, Johann, very pretty. Easy to say for a man who has already achieved greatness. You think the world exists to serve your purpose.”

  “It does not?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Then I say, ‘Make the world serve your purpose!’”

  “What do you suggest? Shall I sell my soul to the devil?”

  “I imagine the devil doesn’t want such a puling soul. I imagine that the ones he wants most are the ones the least for sale.”

  I should have seen it, Bicé thought. It had been so obvious, for so long. Valentin had lost hold of reality. Day after day, she had seen him sneak off to his white room, that room that Vileroy had given him, the one that reminded Bicé of the whitewashed, padded rooms in insane asylums. He had gone from carefree and playful to lascivious, nervous . . . almost mad. He trembled, fidgeted, his eyes darted. Sometimes, he would stare at a demo of a video game playing on his computer, thinking he was controlling it. His fingers shook and tapped the keys out of sync with the character onscreen. He was saying things, having fragments of conversations over and over again in a hundred possibilities of pasts real only to him. In the past few weeks he had made so many jumps, backward and forward, that his senses had finally given up. He didn’t know which crimes he’d committed, which lives he’d led. She should have seen it. It was obvious now — his gift wasn’t meant to last him long. He was never supposed to get what he was promised. It would continue confusing him, perverting his mind until he became so full of memories that he would beg the governess to kill him.

  But Vileroy already had the soul she wanted from him. Maybe, if it would help her plans, she’d give him what he wanted, erase the million voices in his head, make him into a mindless dummy. But that hadn’t happened yet — not to Valentin. Bicé thought of Buddy, the other person she had seen at the white window. And finally, she understood. Buddy was Valentin’s future. He was a shell. The remaining portion of a real person with a past, a family, a life corrupted many years ago. In the weeks he had spent with Christian, he had gained back a little of his old self, a little of his lost humanity. But bringing back a lost soul, in its complex and undamaged entirety, isn’t a job for a few weeks. Poor Buddy, she thought.

  Bicé and Christian ran out of Victoria’s room and into the center space of the house.

  “Where is he?” asked Christian in a voice too calm to mean anything good. He wasn’t whipping around frantically, as Bicé had expected.

  “Where’s who?”

  “Our brother, Valentin.”

  Bicé didn’t know where to start. He’s not our brother. Do we even have a real family? Do they know we exist? Maybe we should focus on the evil incarnate that raised us. But Christian didn’t seem interested.

  “Why would you want to see Val?” asked Bicé.

  “Because,” said Christian, still infuriated, it seemed — but calm, impressively calm.

  “Because why?” said Bicé, trying to chuckle while she said it.

  “Because I want to find him — and kill him.” Bicé shook her head. Christian wasn’t the only one bubbling with anger, she thought. Belle had taken so much from her. She had taken her childhood, her memories of their parents, her whole life, all for some petty desire to be beautiful. What made Bicé furious more than anything else was that she knew now that Belle remembered. Belle knew what their parents looked like. She knew if their mother had an infectious laugh or if their father had a beard.

  “I’m going to my room,” said Bicé as she checked her watch.

  Christian seemed to snap out of it. “What? Now?”

  “I have a headache. I need to think. You can find Valentin on your own.”

  “OK, but I wasn’t going to actually kill him. I just . . . he’s just . . . It’s just a lot.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m going to my room.”

  “We should get out of here.”

  Bicé didn’t bother to respond. She just went to her room, the room she used to study, her soothing, secluded cave, where she had everything she needed. Bicé turned the corner of her hall, practically running the last few steps. She had lost track of the time. Real time. After everything that had happened tonight, she hadn’t had a chance to be alone. She pushed the door open and ran inside. She looked around, her eyes darting, and went straight for the end table. It was a little wooden table with a single drawer, hardly worth noticing. When she saw the empty tabletop, Bicé froze. Hands shaking, she reached for the drawer and pulled it open. It was empty. Trembling from head to toe, Bicé managed to pull herself toward a chair. She put both hands under her legs, to keep them from shaking. But she couldn’t stop her breathing from growing more desperate, more frantic, until her whole body was wracked by giant dry heaves.

  No one knew how lonely Bicé felt when she hid in her timeless cave. The darkness of those moments haunted her — the hopelessness of a world no longer spinning to its inevitable conclusion. The day before, she had allowed Belle into this space — this sacred and terrible space — so that she could help her redeem herself with Thomas. After knowing that Belle had given herself to Vileroy, it was an act of forgiveness by Bicé. And it only added to the pain when she found out later that it was Belle who had betrayed her. None of the other children could guess how she felt after all that, and now she couldn’t even find the green bottles.

  Valentin popped his head into Belle’s room. She was still crying. Valentin ignored it. “Is Christian in here?” he asked. “Whoa, Belle, you should stop crying. It’s getting worse.”

  “I don’t care,” she sobbed. “I don’t care”’hiccup — “how ugly I get. Bicé hates me. I’ve lost my sister” — hiccup — “forever. I” — hiccup — “sold” — hiccup — “her out.”

  “Ah, Belle, don’t cry. Maybe she’ll forgive you. Now, can you just tell me where Christian is?”

  Belle calmed down a bit and gave Valentin a strange look. “I don’t know. What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see everything’s falling apart?”

  “OK, but when was the last time you saw him? Did he say where he was?”

  Belle got up from her seat by the window.

  “Where are you going?” Valentin asked.

  “To find Bicé.”

  Belle wiped the tears off her face as she ran toward Bicé’s room. On her way over, she caught a glimpse of
herself in a candlelit window. Her heart gave a lurch. When Belle finally made it all the way down Bicé’s hall, she stopped abruptly. She had expected to have to knock, to have to beg for Bicé to open the door. But the door was ajar. It had been left open carelessly — so unlike Bicé. The silence gave her an eerie feeling, as if something was wrong. She felt the way she used to feel when she was little and something bad had happened to Bicé. Like the way her knees hurt when Bicé got a scrape or the way she got a lump in her throat when their mother yelled at Bicé.

  She reached for the door and pushed it open. She opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly all the air was knocked out of her body. There, staring silently into a tiny hand mirror, was Bicé. But it wasn’t Bicé. Her hair was longer, her body shapelier, her face thinner, like their mother’s. Belle gave a silent gasp. Her twin sister was at least twenty-five years old.

  Belle wanted to rush over to her sister, to find out what had happened, but her legs wouldn’t move. “Bicé — Bicé, is that you?”

  Bicé’s hands were still shaking, but she managed to motion her sister over. Suddenly something inside Belle felt absolutely, utterly, irreversibly sorry. Through her tear-blurred eyes, the twenty-five-year-old Bicé looked exactly like their mother. Belle ran over and buried her ruined face in Bicé’s lap.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Bicé. Please forgive me.”

  Bicé stroked Belle’s dull mousy hair lovingly. She hadn’t expected her anger to melt away so quickly. But Belle was sorry, and these were extreme circumstances. Belle could feel Bicé’s hands still trembling. She lifted her head.

  “What happened to you? Why?”

  “I’m old, Belle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I wasted my life, sitting alone, reading my books.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember when Nicola gave us these gifts? When she told me that I could hide anytime I wanted?”

  Hearing Bicé call Madame Vileroy by her first name was jarring to Belle. “Yeah,” she said. “It was just five years ago, when we all got our gifts. I’m so sorry she’s made you think you’ve been here all your life. It was just five years . . . not fifteen.”

  “No. I have been here all my life. She tricked me, Belle.”

  “But . . .”

  “It’s been so many years. At first, it was great. I could read all the books I wanted. She gave me tons of them. I could learn languages. She pushed me to keep going. How long do you think it takes to learn so many?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Not days . . . not months. It takes years. Years. Do you understand?”

  “But if you stopped time, then it doesn’t matter how long —”

  “She didn’t tell me that my body would keep growing old. Everyone else stopped, but I kept going.”

  Belle’s eyes grew round with understanding. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  “She’s been keeping me the same age as the rest of you with a serum that she gave me every night — a serum that erases the time that I spend hiding, as long as I keep taking it for the rest of my life. At first, when I didn’t know that I was still growing, she told me it was medicine . . . for my headaches. But then, after I had done it way too much, she finally told me. But by then, I couldn’t stop. Without the serum, I would die.”

  “Die?”

  “I’m past death, Belle. The time I spent hiding, it’s been more than a hundred years.”

  Belle felt a wave of nausea. Bicé let out a small laugh and went on.

  “I was already in my twenties when we got here. Remember when we went to that school play? I turned thirty in the library. I spent a big chunk of my seventies at some golf game. Without the serum, I’ll grow to my natural age and die.”

  Belle looked confused. “But you’ve already taken the serum, right? So it’s done its work. Those years didn’t count.”

  “That’s not how it works. Maybe erase is the wrong word. The serum doesn’t erase those years. It masks them. It hides the years that I spent hidden. See? And it only works if I keep taking it. She designed it like that on purpose. Nicola wants me to be dependent on her.” Then Bicé looked down, ashamed. “That’s how she’s been keeping me here. I need her.”

  “I . . . I don’t understand. Why would she . . . ?”

  “It wasn’t really clear to me either until tonight. I always wondered why she would give me such a big gift, with no strings attached. But then again, before that night when you brought Thomas over, I didn’t really know who she was, and I thought she gave me the gift for the same reason she gave it to all of you. That she was some sort of witch and she had adopted us. But then, when I found out what you guys did, I wondered why she would give me the ability to hide. Did I sell my soul, too? Did I sell something else? Tonight, I finally realized what happened. She kidnapped me at first because that was the only way she could have you.”

  “I’m so sorry . . .”

  Bicé put up her hand to silence her. “But then, at some point after that, she started to want my soul, too.”

  Belle gasped.

  “But I wouldn’t give it to her. I guess that’s why I didn’t have that mark on my chest. I just wasn’t willing. And she never actually asked me flat out, since I didn’t know who she was, and my memory was gone. So she gave me the gift, because she knew that I was confused and scared, that I would find it attractive — the chance to hide away, to be alone with my books. She knew that I would become addicted to hiding, use it too much, and then become dependent on her forever — even be willing to barter for my soul. She didn’t tell me about the aging until I was already too old. Up until then, I thought the serum was for my headaches and to keep me awake while I hid.”

  Belle hiccuped, remembering the time when she had shared her sister’s loneliness.

  Bicé went on. “Then, after I found out about who she was, she gave me some time to decide, to choose between my soul and the serum. My soul or my life. And so I began to hide more and more, to prolong my life, and also because . . .” Bicé stopped, reconsidering her words. “My time has run out, Belle.”

  “What happens now?”

  Bicé’s voice broke. “She didn’t leave me any for tonight. She doesn’t need me anymore. She knows she can’t have me. And she can’t trust me.” Belle looked confused, and Bicé went on. “A little while ago, even before I knew about the trick she had played on me, I started to reach a goal she never thought I would reach. It all went wrong for her and her plan, and so she started trying to stop me from hiding. I was learning too much. She would do things to scare me, send Victoria to spy, torture me in my dreams, come to me while I was hiding . . .”

  Belle didn’t want to know any more of this horrible story, this curse that she had inflicted on her sister, but she asked anyway. “What were you trying to do?”

  “You’ll know in time,” said Bicé.

  Bicé’s resolve made Belle feel two inches tall. The only reason Bicé had been worth keeping was that she was the key to keeping Belle. But now it seemed that Madame Vileroy didn’t want Belle anymore — and so she didn’t need Bicé. A fresh surge of guilt washed over her.

  “I’m sorry, Bicé. It’s my fault you got into this.” Belle began to sob again on Bicé’s lap. “You don’t deserve this.”

  “Yeah, I do. You wanted to be pretty, but I accepted her gift too. I drank her serum. I was arrogant enough to think I could know everything there was to know in one lifetime. I can’t believe it . . . I spent my whole life in a cave.” Bicé gave an ironic laugh.

  Belle knew now why her sister had been so fidgety, so scared of the world she spent so little time in, always looking for a place to hide away.

  “I wish I’d just waited,” Belle said, her head still in Bicé’s lap.

  “What do you mean?” Bicé asked.

  “You look beautiful. We would have been beautiful. Now, because of me, neither of us gets a chance.”

  Belle couldn’t stop
the tears from racing down her rough, blotchy cheeks. Inside, she felt a torrential regret. At twenty-five, her twin sister was something out of a 1920s postcard — so classic, her eyes like an oasis, pools so blue you’d think they were a mirage in the pale desert, even in a black-and-white card. She could almost see Bicé, the traveler, a true beauty with her gorgeous raven hair and long olive legs, how she would have been in another life, standing in a train station with a fashionable hat, hair like feathers, posing for a picture, looking so timeless you’d think she might not be real. But it was too late. Bicé looked older now, the fresh-faced beauty hurtling slowly toward middle age, and the unthinkable beyond. She was changing by the minute, and Belle felt her heart jump up in her throat.

  “Bicé, we have to find the rest of that serum.”

  “And what about you?” asked Bicé.

  “We don’t have time for that. I’m OK with myself now. I’ve been addicted to that stuff long enough. I just want to leave. I’ll live with what I have.”

  Bicé smiled at her sister. She could smell her stench stronger than ever now, like a rotting corpse turned inside out. As sorry as she felt for her sister, and for herself, Bicé knew that Belle had given up on her obsession. And that made her want to forgive, to live the last few hours of her life in peace with her sister.

  Just then, Christian burst into the room. At the sight of Bicé, he stopped.

  “I’m growing old.” Bicé looked back at him.

  Christian just stood there, looking stupid.

  “Christian. It’s me,” said Bicé, trying to snap him out of it.

  He stopped staring and said, “What?”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You didn’t want to leave before.”

  “I had to think about some things.”

  “But now?”

  “Now I want to leave.”

  Belle, Bicé, and Christian ran out of the room with a new determination. Along the way, Belle told Christian the story. Finally, after all this time, Christian understood why Bicé had been reluctant to leave — that it was a life-and-death decision for her.